Cold Email Throttling

Infusionsoft's throttling mechanism automatically places a temporary hold on emails sent to cold contacts. This process is in place to protect you and Infusionsoft from high complaint rates. Your account will be subject to the consequence if the complaint rate exceeds acceptable standards and violates the Acceptable Use Policy.

How It Works

Throttling affects broadcast emails sent to cold contacts.

Warm contacts included in the broadcast are not subject to throttling and their email will be immediately sent.

The mechanism will randomly select a small test portion of the cold list, and begin to send emails during a 16 hour throttling period.

During the throttling period, complaints must not exceed 0.1% (1 complaint per 1,000 emails per email provider. Example: If 2,000 of the 72,499 emails were to Gmail, and 2 or more Gmail receivers said it was spam, the broadcast would stop).

After the throttling period, if complaints are under 0.1%, the remainder of emails will be sent and cold contacts will be considered "warm" in your application 24 hours later.

However, if excessive complaints are received, the broadcast will stop. This gives you the opportunity to correct the issue before trying again. Was explicit permission obtained? Do they expect to receive your email? What feedback are they leaving for you?

The "Try Again" button allows for one re-try, but if additional complaints are received, the broadcast will permanently stop and the "Try Again" button will be disabled.

Risk Management on Imports

The highest frequency of SPAM complaints occur after a new or existing customer imports a list and sends out a broadcast or starts a follow-up sequence. When you import a list into Infusionsoft, we provide a list of requirements so that you can evaluate your list before proceeding. If the people on your list have not given you permission to email them, you can proceed with the import, but must indicate that you do not have permission to email the list. The list will be imported as "non-marketable" which means you will not be able to send these people email until you contact them via direct mail or phone to obtain their permission.

Compliance Monitoring

We also have an internal team that is dedicated to monitoring and quickly responding to issues related to excessive SPAM complaints. This monitoring ensures that the customers who violate email best practices (by sending SPAM emails) do not jeopardize email deliverability for those who do follow best practices.

What to Do if a Broadcast Does Not Pass Throttling

If your broadcast has was stopped during the throttling process, it is important to examine the list and identify causes of spam complaints before attempting to send to the list again. Your recipients will mark any email as spam that is unwanted and/or unexpected. Read our list of best email marketing practices that outline the ways to gain explicit permission and set expectations, which greatly reduces the possibility of spam complaints.

If you’ve cleaned up your list and you are confident that your email is wanted and expected by each contact, you can queue up a new batch. To make sure you don’t send duplicate emails to the contacts from the first broadcast attempt, tag those contacts and choose to exclude that tag in your new batch.

If you have confirmed your list was built, maintained and sent to using best practices, you can use the “Try Again” button in the broadcast report (Marketing Reports->Email Broadcasts->View.) This option will start the throttling process again, and is only available once per broadcast. Be aware that you should only use this option if you are confident that your broadcast will not generate excessive complaints, as every complaint affects your sender reputation.Email throttling is a reactive safety mechanism that limits damage to your reputation if you send to a high-risk list, however, you are still ultimately responsible for the complaints that your broadcast emails produce. A proactive approach to minimizing risk is still the best method for maintaining a great sender reputation and respecting the Infusionsoft Acceptable Use Policy.